08/26/2025

CSCA Women's Caucus Email

Hello members of CSCA Women's Caucus!

I hope you are considering submitting a paper or panel to Women's Caucus for CSCA 2026 by October 10, 2025 11:59pm CDT. I’ll be contacting reviewers next month to make sure that you are still available to review. If anyone who did not volunteer would like to, feel free to send me an email at fitz0332@umn.edu.

I have a several things to share with you/ask of you in this email:

• Nominations for Secretary position
• Proposal by ERICC to create an intercaucus committee for the CCT Award
• Change to by-laws
• Looking for volunteers for an intercaucus book club panel with SOGI

1) Nominations for Secretary position

I am soliciting nominations for the secretary position for Women’s Caucus, to start serving as secretary at the 2027 business meeting. If elected, you serve a 3-year term - as secretary in 2027, vice-chair in 2028, and chair in 2029. The secretary takes meeting minutes during our annual business meeting. It is also possible to elect co-secretaries, and personally, I think it’s a good idea since there are occasions when a member of the executive committee cannot attend the annual meeting. In past years, we have solicited nominations during the business meeting, but typically get only one volunteer, so I’m hoping that inviting you to nominate yourself or someone else early will give you some time to think about it. We will also take additional nominations at the business meeting and add them to our ballot if necessary. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else for the position of secretary of Women’s Caucus, please email Kristin Fitzsimmons at fitz0332@umn.edu. In your email, please let me know if you would prefer to serve alone or as a co-secretary (and therefore also co vice-chair and co-chair) if elected.

2) Intercaucus committee for the CCT Award

The current chair of the Ethnicity, Race, Identity, and Class Concerns (ERICC) Caucus, Anjana Mudambi, has proposed an intercaucus committee with Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Caucus (SOGI) and Women’s Caucus to determine the winner and speaker for the Carolyn Calloway Thomas Award/Lecture, which is given by ERICC annually. Her proposal is to stagger the election of each member so that Women’s Caucus would elect a member for this committee in 2027 and they would serve a 3-year term on the selection committee so that a new committee member would be elected in 2029 for the following conference. In order to do so, we need to amend our bylaws, which I have put a link to in the next section!

3) Proposal to amend bylaws

            When I was looking for the bylaws to propose the aforementioned changes, I also found changes that, to my knowledge, were never voted on. In this link -- Proposed Bylaw Changes -- you will find the proposed language for the CCT award committee mentioned  above, as well as some proposed amended language that was never officially accepted. According to our bylaws, I have to notify the caucus members at least 30 days before our business meeting about proposed changes to the bylaws. We’ll then vote to accept or reject these changes at our 2026 meeting.

4) Looking for book club panelists for an intercaucus panel with Sexual Orientation and Gender Caucus (SOGI)

            I am also looking for 1-2 members of Women's Caucus who would like to be on a book club panel with Sexual Orientation and Gender Caucus (SOGI). Last year they read Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler. This year they are tentatively planning on discussing Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. All attendees are welcome to join in on the conversation, but panelists would commit to reading the book and helping to lead the conversation. Please let me know if this is something you would commit to and I will forward your name to the current SOGI chair, Danielle Stern.

Thank you for bearing with this long email. I hope to hear from some of you soon - if you have questions about anything in the email, please let me know!

Best,

Kristin Fitzsimmons
Fitz0332@umn.edu
Chair of Women’s Caucus